Development or just poverty reduction?

Many of the debates about foreign aid and development assistance seem to pivot on different visions of the goal: development or just poverty reduction.

The Fatal Flaw in Cost-Benefit Analysis

In Part I of this commentary on the Sarkozy-Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the focus was on the social engineering perspective underlying the search for such an index. But at the end of that commentary, I noted that the Commission’s discussion of different indices was rather “academic” since there is one dominant index used in governmental decision-making: the monetized gains minus the monetized losses of cost-benefit analysis. A proponent of cost-benefit (CB) analysis would roll up all the Commission’s discussion into the question of the better “costing out” of all the direct and indirect impacts of a social decision.

Social Engineering vs. Pragmatism: Part I of Commentary on the Sarkozy-Stiglitz Commission

The point of this Part I commentary on the Sarkozy-Stiglitz Commission is to juxtapose the social engineering perspective implied in the whole exercise of trying to find a better index of “economic performance and social progress” to a more pragmatic perspective.

Obama needs new job creation ideas

The Obama economics team seems trapped by rather conventional job-creation ideas, e.g., Keynesian pump-priming or tax breaks for small businesses, ideas whose main virtue is that they are better than the opposition’s ideas of more tax breaks for the rich. But there are other ways to increase job creation and entrepreneurship that have been hindered by the size-maximizing tendencies of American corporations.

Associational speech: Citizens United vs. FEC

What is the basis for the liberal-progressive anathema to corporate speech?